What You Should Know: OCD

OCD is something most people have heard about, but have very little understanding of what it is and how debilitating it can be. It takes an unwarranted amount of time and interferes with personal, social and professional daily tasks and is usually brought out in people who had stressful and traumatic life events before suffering from the illness. I will be writing a four-part series about OCD from the education aspect to my experience to handling it yourselves and how loved ones can too. “Oh em gee, I have serious OCD! I always need to clean my room.” These are statements you hear from people regularly, who think OCD is only about needing to clean. Yes, cleaning is a type of ritual people do when they have OCD, but it’s not the only one. That statement isn’t just incorrect, it’s misleading and unfair to the people who really suffer every day.

What really is OCD?

According to google ‘OCD or Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder is an anxiety disorder in which people have unwanted and repeated thoughts, feelings, ideas, sensations, or behaviors that make them feel driven to do something. Often the person carries out the behaviors to get rid of the obsessive thoughts, but this only provides temporary relief.’ OCD is an obsession in your mind that you feel you need to act on in order for the thought to subside. So first comes the obsession than comes the compulsion.

A person with OCD usually has repetitive thoughts, images or urges that they do not feel they are able to control. They also have uncomfortable feelings; such as fear, disgust, doubt or a feeling that things have to be in a way that feels “just right”. According to medicalnewstoday.com Common OCD obsessions include:

• losing control, including a fear of acting on an urge to harm one’s self or others
• perfectionism, including concerns about exactness, needing to remember things, and fear of losing things
• harm, including a fear of being responsible for something terrible happening
• unwanted sexual thoughts including obsessions about homosexuality or incest
• religious obsessions including concerns about offending God

OCD falls into five categories:

• Checking – Constantly checking to see if you left the stove or repeatedly checking if the doors locked.  Obsessively reexamine past memories to make sure a certain thing didn’t happen. Checking the garbage that you did not throw anything important out, etc.
• Contamination / Mental Contamination –  including body fluids, germs, and dirt. Constantly needing to clean, won’t use things that ‘feel’ contaminated, shake clothes when feel contaminated etc. Mental contamination is when feelings of dirtiness come when mistreated.
• Hoarding – difficulty throwing things out and holding onto things as if they were a necessity.
• Symmetry and Orderliness – Obsess about objects being lined up or organized in a certain way to avoid discomfort or harm.  You may adjust kitchen appliances on the shelf or feel uneasy feeling something on one side of your body.
• Ruminations / Intrusive Thoughts – Ruminations is when a person prolongs on something for a long period of time example: religion or questions etc. They are indulged, unlike intrusive thoughts. Intrusive thoughts are obsessional thoughts that can be terrible, horrific and disturbing and you will go to extreme lengths to prevent them from happening. You are aware of these intrusive thoughts and feelings and do not want them. You will find these thoughts disturbing, unwanted and can be aware they don’t make sense There are subcategories of intrusive thoughts.

Subcategories of Intrusive Thoughts

• • Sexuality – This category is for people who get intrusive thoughts about their sexuality. They may have fears of being gay or being attracted to both genders.
  • Sexual – These sufferers fear things such as touching people inappropriately, having sex with inanimate objects, or even family members. Fear of being a pedophile. Sexual thoughts about God or religious figures. Example: seeing a child or a family member and being scared of reaching out and touching them sexually or having sexual thoughts towards them.
  • Religious – Includes obsessively praying, thinking God or the devil will punish you, blasphemous thoughts, fear of doing prayers incorrectly, fears of always being sinful.
  • Magical thinking – Fear that the more you think something bad will happen, the more likely it will happen. So they will perform time-consuming magical rituals to lessen the likelihood of these events happening.  You may be afraid to think of car crashes, or a loved one getting hurt for fear it may happen.
  • Relationships – Obsessive thoughts about your relationship, wondering if you’re good enough, wondering if the person is cheating, constantly needing reassurance.
  • Violent thoughts – Having obsessive thoughts of carrying out violent plans. You sometimes think in-depth, direct thoughts at loved ones, or at random people.

What causes OCD?

Like I said earlier, OCD is an illness in which patients experience obsessions and then act on them by performing compulsions. They occur when the brain generates repetitive, powerful thoughts that are intrusive and produce anxiety.  An exact cause of OCD has yet to be discovered. Research shows that OCD could occur for multiple reasons. There are genetic causes, OCD runs in families. Sometimes OCD happens because of autoimmune difficulties like a dysfunction of strep throat for instance as a child.

Behavioral causes can also be at fault. The theory suggests that people with OCD associate certain objects or situations with fear. They learn to avoid or perform rituals, maybe even a way to gain control back into their life. There are cognitive causes which can mean maybe people with OCD misinterpret their thoughts.

OCD sufferers will put importance on their thoughts whereas someone else would let it go. Neurobiological causes studies show that people with OCD have more activity in the brain than non-OCD sufferers. And last environmental causes which are environmental stressors that may trigger OCD tendencies in people who are more likely to get the condition like traumatic brain injury

In conclusion, it’s important we become educated and try to understand what OCD actually is. It will help not only people struggling with it understand what’s happening to them but the people around them too.

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world-Nelson Mandela

In my next post of the series, I’ll be talking about my own personal experience with OCD.

Leave comments below what you know about OCD!

Disclaimer

*Although I have studied and experienced these things myself, I am no way a professional or have my social work license. All opinions in my posts are my own and you should go to your nearest therapist for a professional opinion and proper diagnosis. Do not use anything in these posts to diagnose yourself and others. Use at your own risk.